AI Cost Calculator & LLM Pricing Estimator
Model production API budgets with high precision. Compare input, cached, output, and reasoning token costs across 19 frontier models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and DeepSeek.
TokenMath.net — AI Architecture Budget Estimate
AI Cost & API Budget Estimator
Simulate token bills with prompt caching discounts, batch API pricing, and real-world volume scaling across leading LLMs.
Reasoning models produce hidden deliberation tokens billed at output token rates.
Claude Sonnet 5
Workload Cost Comparison Across All Models
Exact cost for 1,500 in + 500 out at 30,000 monthly requests.
| Model | Provider | Per Request | Per 1,000 | Monthly (30d) | Cache Support | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $0.00035 | $0.3500 | $10.50 | Yes | |||
| Mistral AI | $0.00052 | $0.5250 | $15.75 | Yes | ||
| DeepSeek | $0.00070 | $0.7000 | $21.00 | Yes | ||
| Meta / Open | $0.00075 | $0.7500 | $22.50 | No | ||
| OpenAI | $0.00090 | $0.9000 | $27.00 | Yes | ||
| Mistral AI | $0.00150 | $1.50 | $45.00 | Yes | ||
| Meta / Open | $0.00200 | $2.00 | $60.00 | No | ||
| $0.00300 | $3.00 | $90.00 | Yes | |||
| OpenAI | $0.00385 | $3.85 | $115.50 | Yes | ||
| Anthropic | $0.00400 | $4.00 | $120.00 | Yes | ||
| OpenAI | $0.00700 | $7.00 | $210.00 | Yes | ||
| OpenAI | $0.00900 | $9.00 | $270.00 | Yes | ||
| $0.00900 | $9.00 | $270.00 | Yes | |||
Claude Sonnet 5Active | Anthropic | $0.0120 | $12.00 | $360.00 | Yes | |
| OpenAI | $0.0160 | $16.00 | $480.00 | Yes | ||
| Anthropic | $0.0200 | $20.00 | $600.00 | Yes | ||
| Anthropic | $0.0400 | $40.00 | $1,200.00 | Yes | ||
| OpenAI | $0.0400 | $40.00 | $1,200.00 | Yes | ||
| OpenAI | $0.0700 | $70.00 | $2,100.00 | Yes |
Real-World Workload Cost Benchmarks
Estimated monthly costs for typical developer architectures with 50% prompt caching applied:
| Architecture Tier | Avg Prompt Tokens | Claude Sonnet 5 | GPT-5.6 Sol | Gemini 3.8 Flash | Claude Haiku 4.5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Light Chatbot (10k req/mo) | 500 in / 200 out | $0.045 / mo | $0.033 / mo | $0.011 / mo | $0.015 / mo |
| Document Analysis (50k req/mo) | 4,000 in / 800 out | $1.20 / mo | $0.90 / mo | $0.30 / mo | $0.40 / mo |
| Production RAG SaaS (500k req/mo) | 8,000 in / 1,200 out | $21.00 / mo | $16.00 / mo | $5.25 / mo | $7.00 / mo |
| Autonomous Agent Loop (1M req/mo) | 12,000 in / 2,000 out | $66.00 / mo | $50.00 / mo | $16.50 / mo | $22.00 / mo |
Frequently Asked Questions About AI API Costing
How is LLM API pricing calculated?
LLM providers bill separately for input tokens (the prompt and context you send) and output tokens (the completion generated by the model). Output tokens are typically 3x to 5x more expensive than input tokens because each generated token requires a sequential autoregressive forward pass through the entire neural network.
How does Prompt Caching reduce my monthly API bill?
When repetitive prompt prefixes (such as system instructions, tool definitions, or retrieved RAG context) exceed the provider's threshold (typically 1,024 tokens), providers cache the Key-Value (KV) attention matrices in server memory. On cache hits, input prices are discounted by 50% to 90%, yielding massive cost reductions for continuous workloads.
What are reasoning tokens, and why do they cost more?
Reasoning models (like OpenAI o3, o3-pro, and o4-mini) execute an internal chain-of-thought before emitting their final answer. These internal deliberation tokens are billed as output tokens at output rates (e.g. $60/1M on o3), which can significantly multiply the total cost per query.
When should I use Batch API mode?
If your application does not require synchronous sub-second responses (such as offline data extraction, overnight evaluation suites, or bulk text summarization), major providers offer 50% discounts on both input and output tokens for queries completed within a 24-hour turnaround window.